Psyche
by Nitesh
Summary: A slew of oneshots revolving around a very unstable Desmond. Thirty chances to be fixed. Not every story has a happy ending, so let the games begin. For the Psych30 challenge on livejournal.
1. Transference

**Title:** In His Eyes He Saw God.  
**Characters:** Desmond, Charlie.  
**Rating:** Probably PG13, just to be safe.  
**Prompt:** Prompt #1 – Transference.  
**Word Count:** Approx. 2500.  
**Spoilers:** Spoilers up to… hmm, probably up to _Three Minutes_. Only up to that point as far as the Charlie and Eko subplot has gone, though. Otherwise, it's probably pretty solidly… well, okay. _SOS_.   
**Warnings:** Couple swear words, nothing to fret over.   
** A/N:** This is not actually finale-based, as I've had this idea for a fic for a while. It kind of went in a completely different direction then intended, for the sake of the prompt, but whatever. I like it anyway.

Reviews are a writer's blood and water, and constructive criticism is very much appreciated. I really want to know how I can improve as a writer.

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_**Transference (n.)** – In psychoanalysis, the process by which emotions and desires originally associated with one person are unconsciously shifted to another person, especially to the analyst._

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Charlie was having trouble.

He was frustrated, tired, and he hadn't made any progress on Eko's—on _his_ church, and he had been working on it the entire afternoon. Sure, the floor plan was laid out, and one of the sides of the rectangular space resembled a meter-high wall, but he was no construction worker. He couldn't pick up an entire fallen tree and place it on the border. Even if he _was_ able too, he was pretty sure that even the island didn't ignore the laws of physics, which would immediately send one tree rolling off the other and come crashing down to the ground. Knowing _this_ place, the tree would probably roll onto and crush his foot.

That was just how the island was.

"Bollocks," he muttered to himself. He had all the trees he needed, neatly rolled into a pile. He had the ax, he had a hammer and _nails_, for God's sake. Why someone would ever pack a hammer and nails (Michael? He _had_ been in construction) in a flight from Sydney to Los Angeles was not the question, however. The real question was, why would the island give him everything he needed, just to leave him alone without the abilities to use it?

Locke would say that the island worked in mysterious ways, but Locke wasn't there.

"_Bollocks_," he said louder. The island said nothing in reply. He sat down heavily and glared hard at the pile of wood, silently willing it to create a wall by itself.

"What is it that you're building?"

He leapt up and spun around to face the wall of jungle at his back. His eyes scanned the area frantically until they finally landed on a person, standing at the edge with one hand on a tree and the other shouldering a backpack. He looked just as surprised to see Charlie as Charlie was to see him, and with shadows under his eyes, giving him a perpetually exhausted expression, and his clothes muddy and torn, it was no surprise that Charlie had leapt to his feet.

"Who're you?" He hadn't seen this man in the months they had been on the island, he knew that much. He knew everyone by face now, and he didn't know that one. The ax was at his side, but if there were more of them it wouldn't matter. He wrapped his fingers around the handle anyway. "What's your name?"

"My name?" The man smiled for only a second, and Charlie caught a flash of off-white teeth. "I'm Desmond." He seemed to take great pleasure in being able to say such a thing before his face fell back into its seemingly default expression of wide-eyed surprise.

The name brought recognition, but his grip on the ax didn't loosen. "Aren't you the nutter that was in the hatch? Went running off as soon as Locke and Jack got down there?"

It wasn't the most tactful approach, but a flicker of a smile appeared on his face despite Charlie's less than diplomatic method. "If that's how they're calling it." He turned his head slowly to look away from Charlie at the skeleton of the building. "So what is it you're building?"

Charlie didn't answer right away, but squinted down the beach. He could see people milling about well-in shouting distance, should Desmond try anything. "It's a church," he said finally, slightly injured that he should even have to say.

"Ah." Desmond rolled his head to look at the tree, as if he should have realized this himself. He didn't say anything more, or move from the position in the jungle.

Charlie clicked his tongue in the awkward silence. "Give me a hand?" When Desmond looked back over at him, appearing surprised that the other man was still talking to him, Charlie gestured to the fallen tree nearest to him. "It's rather difficult to do, you know. All this… _building_ stuff."

Desmond blinked at the logs, and Charlie almost laughed.

"I… yeah, brother, I'll lend a hand." And a minute later he was pulling up one end of the tree as Charlie lifted the other side. Almost like it had been with Eko, but not quite. Eko hardly needed any help at all, lifting these logs and steadying them in their places. Now Charlie was Eko, directing where the tree went and instructing Desmond to hold it steady while he hammered them into something that resembled a wall.

"So why a church?"

Same question everyone else asked, except now it was in a voice and manner that was completely different. Still working, holding the log carefully, and the question didn't seem like it would impact his want to help. Curious above condescending, with no ending note of, "A storage shed would have been more handy" (Sawyer had offered that gem of advice). Creating conversation. One must miss that, he supposed, being alone in the jungle for days with no one to talk to.

"Why not." He answered with the same response he always did, and Desmond seemed to accept this, nodding silently as he repositioned his hands to give Charlie a better shot with the hammer. A strange reaction when so many others would only question it, and he felt that he had to clarify anyway. He didn't usually try to explain. "I was Catholic." Pause. "I mean, I _am_ Catholic. It's just… it's been a while, all right?" One log almost finished, and Desmond seemed as intent as ever in his work, almost giving the impression that he wasn't listening. That made him even easier to talk to. "There's a Bible in the hatch. I'll get it and… I don't know. I thought Eko would lead it, but…"

Sudden thought. He wasn't a priest, and Eko wasn't interested anymore.

Didn't matter. Think about it later.

"Red cover?" mumbled Desmond.

Shaken out of his thoughts, he stared at the other man until the question registered itself correctly in his head. "Yeah, red cover. Yours?"

Desmond laughed, a noise that split the air in a way that made the hair on the back of Charlie's neck prickle. "I guess it would be." He leaned over and inspected Charlie's handiwork, and though some of the nails were lopsided, Charlie doubted that he would pronounce himself dissatisfied. "I've hardly considered me owning my own _life_ since the crash."

Charlie wasn't exactly sure what to say to that, so he gestured to another log, and Desmond quickly moved from one place to another to haul up one end.

The silence built up between them quickly, and though it didn't seem to bother Desmond, it was a source of discomfort for the former rock god. He was used to the constant noise from other people—Hell, he _enjoyed_ it, lived off it. Silence with no one else around was fine, but silence with someone right with you was just downright eerie.

"One night," he said suddenly, jostling the silence away, "one night I saw angels. Angels and saints… _they_ thought I was only dreaming." He smiled grimly down at the sand as they positioned the log to stack it on the others. He didn't look at Desmond. "Maybe that's why I want to build this church. I feel like… on this island, I've forgotten something, you know? I want to get it back."

"You too, then?"

Again the question came completely out of left field, and Charlie gaped at him. Desmond only offered his genuine (though tired) smile, and his gawking caused him to almost crush a few of his fingers as they dropped the fallen tree into place. "You weren't dreaming, mate. I see one now."

"What?" Charlie whipped around his head to look behind him, but there was only Jack, talking to Sayid beneath a tree. Could have been a quiet conversation or a stern reprimand, as Jack's face always seemed stuck in the same intense expression it always was. He looked back skeptically at Desmond, but Desmond was staring at the doctor, the same, tired smile twisting around his mouth.

"That's just _Jack_," Charlie said, slightly disgusted. What was he doing, talking to someone who was completely out of his mind?

"I don't know about yourself, brother," said Desmond, pushing his hair out of his face as he leaned down to catch the base of another log, "but that man's preformed miracles."

"He's a doctor," said Charlie obviously. "There're a lot of doctors in the world."

"Doesn't mean miracles come in short supply." Such conviction, and he was staring at Jack as though he was absolutely in love with the man. Charlie couldn't help but roll his eyes discreetly. Hero worshipping.

There was a water bottle near him on the ground, and he picked it up to hold out to Desmond. "Break?"

Desmond shrugged, tearing his eyes away from Jack, and sat down facing the beach. He unscrewed the cap to the water bottle slowly, and Charlie noticed him stare at the edges of the mouthpiece, frowning. "I'm not sick," he told him, and sat down heavily by the other man's side.

Desmond looked up, and again it seemed as if he had forgotten that Charlie was even there. "I know," he said, and almost rebelliously took a sip from the bottle before passing it back.

They sat in silence for some time, Charlie's legs splayed out all over the sand and Desmond sitting in a more confined way, with his knees up to his chest and his hands crossed over them. Charlie didn't feel responsible for filling the silence anymore, but found himself watching the former hatch resident out of the corner of his eye. Desmond's thin but athletic frame rose and fell with each breath he took, and though he had been out on this island longer then he had, he seemed far less at ease with his surroundings then Charlie himself was. Finally, Desmond sighed and extended both his legs out on the sand, and Charlie heard a snap-pop with each stretch.

"I was down there for three years," he said, so quietly Charlie had to strain to hear him. "And I haven't really had anyone to talk to for months. I'm sorry if I'm not good company."

"That's okay, man," said Charlie, surprised, but Desmond shook his head.

"Three years ago…" He stopped. Breathed in, breathed out. Began again. "When I crashed on this island, a man found me. His name was Kelvin, and he… saved my life." A hand lifted up and rubbed his face absently. "Yeah, he saved my life."

Charlie didn't say anything.

"He brings me down to that hatch there and pushes that god-damn button—you still pushing the button?" Desmond sat up straighter, still looking into the ocean. One of his fingers tapped anxiously on his knee. "Did they fix the computer?"

The last thing he wanted to do was talk about the button—Eko's apparent new calling in life— but he answered anyway. "Yeah, they're still pushing the button."

Desmond looked down at his knees. Disappointed. Charlie couldn't see why.

"Anyway." He brought his head up again. "He pushes that button and tells me, why, we're just saving the world, Desmond. They're going to come for us, Desmond. Don't worry about a thing, Desmond, because they're coming for us. And I believed him, and I started pushing the button too." An unhappy, cynical smile lit his face. "I pushed that button with Kelvin for over two years, on faith alone. Faith that someone would come eventually, faith in our _cause_. Kelvin became a brother and friend, because he was the only person to be one. And then, do you know what happened?"

Charlie didn't know, but he didn't think he was expected to.

"Kelvin died, and all of a sudden, three years caught up to a man quickly. And I started thinking." He held one finger to his temple. "I wondered _why_. Why would someone do this to me? How could this happen, and what had I done to deserve it? Nothing I have ever done in a past life is worth this… this _misery_ here." He made a steeple with his fingers. "I had one hundred and eight minutes to bury him. No eulogy. No gravestone. I buried him, and as soon as I finished I heard that alarm go off. It was then that I knew, I think," he said, very softly. Charlie watched him, silently enthralled.

"Knew what? Desmond—knew what?"

He smiled the saddest smile that Charlie had ever seen.

"I knew that I didn't believe in God anymore."

There was a long silence in which Desmond stared down at his shoes and Charlie could only look at them too, not wanting to look into the man's face at that very moment. A silence, and Charlie felt that he had to fill it. "And…" he said slowly, the words drawing out of his mouth in a way that he couldn't get to sound real, "do you… do you ever miss it?"

His voice was hollow. "Sometimes." He heard him exhale sharply, a noise that could have been likened to a laugh, at one point. "All the time." He got up, brushing the sand from his pants. Charlie stared up at him, not comprehending. When Desmond noticed, he jerked his head back to the church skeleton. "Let's… let's keep working, yeah?"

Charlie scrambled to his feet as Desmond turned away, stooping down to the end of the next log.

"Why are you helping me?"

Charlie didn't stoop down to get the next log, and Desmond looked up at him, shoving the hair away from his face as he kneeled in the sand.

"Maybe you're not the only one who lost something on this damn island." Quiet hopelessness in every syllable, but his eyes flashed. "Maybe I don't want to just have to believe in _science_, Charlie, maybe I _want_ to believe in something that's not tangible, that _might not make any sense_—" He was shaking, but his eyes were clear and his jaw was set determinedly. "Can you understand how hard it is to want to believe _so badly_, but you _can't?_"

The wind whipped sand around their ankles, and birds were screeching in the jungle. The waves were roaring, and yet it couldn't have been more quiet. Desmond stared his hands, where the nails of one had somehow imbedded themselves in the wood of the fallen palm tree. Charlie didn't look at him. Instead, he looked down the beach, where Sayid was no longer in sight and Jack was now talking to Sawyer, gesturing at his shoulder, where he had been shot.

"Everyone loses faith sometimes." It was a whisper that was almost lost in the roar, but Desmond heard it anyway. He lifted his chin to stare Charlie in the face, and suddenly he felt cold, even in the equatorially hot weather. "If you believe, it will come back."

"That's not true."

Silence, and Desmond was trembling furiously.

"How can I…" Now _his_ voice was shaking, and he swallowed. Ran a hand through his short hair. "How can I prove it to you?"

Desmond stared at him, then smiled. His voice was empty.

"You know what, brother? You can't."


	2. Delusion

**Title:** Prevalence  
**Characters:** Desmond.  
**Rating:** PG13, but seriously. This is an intense PG13.  
**Word Count:** Approx. 3200  
**Spoilers:** Spoilers through the Finale.  
**Warnings:** Dark themes, and overall _extremely_ creepy. Don't say I didn't warn you.  
**Summary:** The island isin control. It is powerful. And if you bite the island, the island will bite back.

**A/N: **Basically, this fic gave the island the excuse to absolutely mutilate poor Desmond's mind. The important thing to remember about this fic is that the island seems to have a mind of its own throughout Lost. That is a theme. In a way, it creates relationships with the characters, and if the character does something that the island doesn't like, the island gets even. Oh yeah, and disclaimer: prayer in the fic is a Catholic Latin prayer for penitence and faith.

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_**Delusion (n.)** – An erroneous belief that is held in the face of evidence to the contrary._

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It's the same routine every day.

It doesn't change, not for the long three years he has been down there. Sure, there had that unfortunate little blip on the calendar, the day that Kelvin died. But that doesn't change the routine—not by much. He still wakes up. He still eats. He still works out for his race around the world. He still pushes the button. He still saves the world every one hundred and eight minutes. All he's done differently, since Kelvin died, is do it twice as much.

He's still doing it.

But somehow, that doesn't completely make sense. There are so many factors to take into consideration, reasons to add to an inevitable breakdown. There is only so much time that a man can spend beneath the earth, with his thought process constantly interrupted. He can't rest, and if you can't rest, you eventually die—death of exhaustion, stress, overwork. Pushing a button.

Some people might have thought that it was God's plan that he would live. God steadying him, giving him strength. They all would have been wrong. The only God on the island was the island itself, and it was far from attempting to steady Desmond or his resolve.

It is a formidable God.

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_Deus meus, credo in te, spero in te, amo te super omnia ex tota anima mea, ex toto corde meo, ex totis viribus meis: amo te quia es infinite bonus et dignus qui ameris; et quia amo te, me paeitet ex toto corde te offendisse: miserere mihi peccatori. Amen._

It's the only prayer he can remember from his boyhood, the days when his family took him to mass every Sunday and he sat in the pews and stared at the stained glass of beautiful people with halos behind their heads. He doesn't know Latin, but he knows that prayer like he knows any one of those glass faces. Desmond says it every morning when he gets out of his bunk.

He makes the mistake of telling Kelvin what it is when he asks, and Kelvin doesn't stop laughing for a long time.

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It's empty and dark, and he can't see. Desmond stumbles, and something snaps underneath his feet. Whatever it was isn't flat but rounded, and he falls forward. Due to his training, however, he has fairly good reflexes, and lands on his hands, not his face, and his body doesn't even touch the ground. He sighs in relief and pushes himself back up.

_Where am I?_

He never thinks it.

Lights snap on, florescent and bright. One hand comes up, shading his eyes. Couldn't see before, and now doesn't want to. But he sees anyway. There is nothing around him but vacant space, white as far as his eye can see. He blinks in confusion, all ideas of perception scrambling themselves in his head. Nothing else is there, save the lights that come down from the nonexistent ceiling, their cords going up into the nothingness and fading away.

He looks down, remembering how he had he tripped, and sees that the firm space beneath his feet (he couldn't call it a floor) is covered in snow globes, stretching out and away. Perception comes back and he sighs, not sure why he was holding his breath to begin with.

Desmond lifts a foot, expecting to see a cracked globe or two there, but there is nothing. He frowns, peering out in front of him, but the blank space that should have been there when his hands hit the ground is no longer there, no evidence that he had ever fallen. But the straight lines _are_ crooked where he's shuffled his feet. He straightens them before picking a snow globe up and brings it before his face, and the white flakes fly in spirals over his little island and never seem to settle even when he flings the tiny globe as far as he could away and it

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He remembers, sometimes, what they said about the human mind.

If you stare at something long enough, it will start to change. Not in actuality, physicality. The mind melts the image in order to keep the eye interested. Colors fade, whites turning off-white and then hinting at the beginning of yellow before sharpening again. Time and aging speeds up for the man who's day went like the last. A place where time stood still, save for one room.

Sometimes, that's all he does for one hundred and four minutes. He stares at the ceiling, and watches the paint fade and smooth. Watches shadows creep along them, even though the position of the sun-lamps don't move in the hatch like the actual sun did.

One day, the paint drips down from the ceiling. The imitation sunlight shoots straight through the droplets as they fall through the air, turning white to red and orange before they fall right through the floor.

Back from before, before the _island_, if such a time and a place truly existed, he remembers that he wanted to be a clinical psychologist.

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He dreams that Penny is sitting on his bed, howling at the ceiling. Her eyes are nothing but bleeding sockets in her head and her mouth is opened wider then any mouth should be able to. He reaches out to touch her, comfort her, and he moves with a strange sort of lethargic, slow grace that reminds him of being underwater.

_Is this what you wanted, Desmond?_

Her face falls off. He's thrashing so hard in his sleep he almost doesn't hear the alarm.

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He's four.

His grandmother holds his hand as they walk at a leisurely pace around the pond, the way they do every Saturday morning. She has a bag of stale bread in one hand and his hand tight in the other, which was probably a good idea, as at that moment he wants to speed up the pace, race around the pond as birds take to the sky. But he's a good boy, and when his grandmother tells him that this is a good place to stop, he stops. She takes half the bread for herself and gives Desmond the other half, and she breaks it into tiny pieces and throw them to the birds, who are already busily looking for things to eat in the pond water.

The ducks immediately clutter around the water's edge, chasing each other around in frantic circles, fighting over who gets what piece and the ducklings usually are pushed over immediately. His grandmother, however, is a fair woman. She keeps an eye on which duck was the one that got no bread, and then feeds him last.

Desmond likes feeding the geese and the swans. The bigger birds somehow seem more majestic then the other, squabbling creatures, even when they beat their own wings against each other to get as much bread as possible. He likes watching their long, narrow necks gracefully bend down and scoop up the soggy pieces of toast.

On this day, however, the geese are the only ones that come to him for the bread. The swans float just out of his throwing range, silent as the geese squabble and honk to get his attention, to get more bread.

The swans stare at him and he wants nothing more than to wrap his hands around their

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_I can't do this anymore. _

_I don't remember you ever having a choice, Desmond._

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It's not long before he's memorized all the records they play in the hatch.

Before Kelvin died, Desmond hadn't even looked twice at the record player. It was Kelvin that listened to it incessantly, humming away to the old tunes that were, quite frankly, not in any of Desmond's taste standards.

Strangely enough, Kelvin said the same thing. "It grows on you," he told Desmond at one point, laughing.

Desmond was shuffling them in the bookshelf, changing the order from date released to color by cover. "I still don't understand why you listen to the same lousy records." His hand stops, comes to a section that didn't follow the previous arrangement and are covered with a thin layer of dust. Nothing spectacularly grimy, but Kelvin listened to the records so much that they shouldn't have been, and he frowned. "What's wrong with these?"

Kelvin looked over before his expression darkened. "I don't listen to those."

Desmond paused, still holding a record in his hands. "Why not?"

"They remind me of Radzinski."

But now Kelvin is dead, and he really can't bring himself to look at his records that _he_ always seemed to favor, either. It wasn't out of grief—it was out of complete and utter hopelessness. Kelvin died waiting for his replacements, and Radzinski had died waiting for his. A vicious circle with no way out and no hope and there is _NO ONE COMING—_

He turns the volume up as loud as it can go, walks to the dormitory, puts his face in a pillow and screams until his throat bleeds.

Eight days later, he finds that he likes the _Romanza_ album the best.

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_You should have left him to the monsters, Desmond. Then you would have had a chance._

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He isn't sure when his watch stops working. But he kept track of the days and times by that watch. It stopped on November 23rd, and by the time he notices that it couldn't possibly still be 4:28 PM, it might have been Christmas.

Sure enough, when he checks all his old, unsent letters that he has written to Penelope, they all have the same date. He never noticed.

He starts carving tallies on a wall every day, or what he hopes is every day. If he's right, he's only been down here for a year and three months.

It can't be right, because it seems like it's been so much longer.

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_I can't do this anymore._

_You can and you will._

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He's dusting.

It's so ordinary and so simple that he misses it, so he gets himself a rag and a bottle of Dharma Initiative brand cleaner and set to work, starting with the armory and ending with the computer room. Except there he didn't so much as dust the computers as wipe them gently to get the fine layer of dust off. He'd never actually seen Kelvin dust, but he must do it occasionally because everything is fairly clean and it wasn't as if they saw each other much, anyway, or that Kelvin had anything better to do with his spare time or—

Penelope is standing behind the sink of the kitchen, looking down into the steel bowl. Her hair creating a curtain, shielding her face from view. But it is _her_, it is _so_ _her_ in her posture and the way that she looks, down to the same pinkish-red jacket that she wore the last time that they had ever seen her, to her wavy long hair that always looked beautiful.

The bottle may or may not have fallen out of his hand. He doesn't notice. "Pen—"

She's sinking. She doesn't look up, but she's sinking and disappearing and he just needs to see her face, needs to see it there and real just _one more time_—

He sprints to the sink, but by then it's too late. She's fallen through the floor and he's lost her for the second time.

Desmond makes it back to the computer before breaking down. He curls up into a ball behind the desk and sobs, hard, shuttering ones that buckle his shoulders and tear through his body. He cries into his hands, nails imbedding into his face, even though there's no one around, no one to see him.

But he can only do that for six minutes more.

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He dreams that Penny is dousing his boat with kerosene, out in the water while he stands on shore, watching her. This somehow makes sense to him because there is a voice in his ear telling him that he won't need it anymore, right before the boat erupts into flames, Penny still standing on deck.

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"Do you think it wants us to?"

Desmond is sitting at the computer, nine minutes to go on the counter. Kelvin peers out around the corner of the kitchen-space into the computer room, and Desmond can see a book in his hand. One of the rare times where they're both awake at the same time, and Desmond finds himself enjoying the other man's company more and more. Then again, Kelvin was the only company to be enjoyed.

"Do you think what wants us to do what?"

"The island." He pauses, looks down at the keyboard. He hears a click, and the nine flips away to show an eight. "Do you think it wants us to push the button?"

There's a long silence from the other room. "Don't be gettin' all crazy on me, Des. I've been here a lot longer then you have."

Stares at Kelvin and Kelvin stares back at him. Stares until he blurs into static and there's a pool of blood where his shadow should be. The alarm starts, and Desmond looks back down at the keyboard and punches numbers until it stops.

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_Dear God,_

_I don't know what you want me to do._

_Yours sincerely, Desmond._

He laughs and burns it in the incinerator.

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The first Christmas, he's not exactly sure what to say or do. So he doesn't say anything, doesn't do anything out of the ordinary, and neither does Kelvin. He's not sure if Kelvin doesn't notice or just doesn't care.

That night, he bakes a cake, because it just doesn't seem right to go by an entire holiday like Christmas without some sort of recognition. He almost looks for the little wax candles to put on top, then remembers what holiday, exactly, he was celebrating, and laughs at himself. He eats half of it and leaves the rest for Kelvin. Sure enough, the plate is washed and put away by the time he goes into the kitchen again. Kelvin never mentions it.

Next year, he hardly notices when Christmas goes by, either.

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_I can't do this anymore. _

_You have to._

_But I—_

_Desmond, please._

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"You've never listened to this one."

"What about it?"

"Well, is it one of his?"

"No."

"Then why don't you listen to it?"

"I'll listen to it on the way home."

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He can't remember what they were arguing about.

He and Kelvin argue as much as any two people randomly thrown together on a deserted island argue. Sometimes he's not sure if they don't just get into fights, sometimes, to make it interesting, to break the monotony. If that's the case, then it's a subliminal wish, and he can't help it.

One night they're in the kitchen, and he can't remember much about why they were both yelling but he remembers how it _feels_, with Kelvin yelling in his face and him yelling something back. And then worse comes to worse and push comes to shove and then Kelvin's fist connects with his face.

And he doesn't remember the rest except falling and there's a ripping, uneven pain that shoots up his arm and he hits his head against the floor on the way down.

He can't remember the argument, but he can remember what happened after it in crystalline perfection, just as if it had happened yesterday. He remembers waking up in a bunk with half a concussion, with his arm torn open horizontally and Kelvin sitting next to him close, wrapping it up with gauze and shaking hands. He can feel the unpleasant sensation of blood matting the back of his head in his hair, and he shifts slightly. Kelvin looks up, and his eyes are wide and fearful.

"I'm sorry." His voice is shaking, and he passes a hand over his eyes. "I'm sorry, Desmond. I don't know what came over me."

"What— what happened to my arm?" He doesn't remember Kelvin doing anything to his arm. People don't rip open other people's arms while they are unconscious. It seems like a common courtesy.

"When you fell, it… you hit it on the cabinet." The bandage keeps twining around his broken flesh, and he finds that much more comforting to watch then Kelvin's miserable eyes or shaking arms.

"I don't know what's wrong with me, Desmond."

Circles around his arm.

"I know I can't do this. I can't do this to you. We need each other, you know?" He laughs, and it's so horribly shrill sounding in the air that he breaks it off right away. "I can't… I can't do this alone. Not again. I know… I know you can see what it's doing to me, can't you?" Haunted. That was the word to describe his face. "I couldn't, I wasn't able to work for that long without it messing with me. That goddamn _button_. Me and you, we have to stay together. We're going to finish this, and then we're going to get out of here." He pauses, stares down at Desmond's mutilated arm and Desmond can tell that he's not good at this. "Please forgive me. "

His words sound hollow, even in his own ear. "I can't even remember what we were fighting about."

And then Kelvin's going in reverse, his hand is unwrapping Desmond's arm and he's talking backwards and off comes his skin and muscle and bone and in long, narrow ribbons that wrap around Kelvin's shaking hands with the gauze and it _hurts_ and he opens his mouth to scream

_WELL I'M ALONE NOW AREN'T I KELVIN THANK YOU FOR THAT YOU BASTARD_

He doesn't sleep very well that night.

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_Penny?_

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He gets to look at her picture every day. It's the reason that he shaves, and it's also the reason that Kelvin doesn't. He doesn't have a picture to slide onto the edge of the mirror. He doesn't talk about family back home (wherever that may be) or friends that he's left behind. Maybe he doesn't have any. Maybe he does.

Sometimes, Desmond pities him. But usually, he only pities himself.

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He dreams that a column of black smoke is winding itself around Kelvin as he sits in the computer chair. The alarm goes off, and the smoke seems to be performing the same kind of death that a python would do to a mouse. He can hear bones cracking and strange, panicked gasps coming from Kelvin's open mouth. It smells like burnt matches.

Desmond doesn't know how smoke can crush a person's ribcage, but he leans over and punches the numbers for Kelvin anyway. The smoke turns and looks at him, and Desmond gets the impression that it's narrowing its eyes at him before dispersing into the air.

-----------

Explosion.

Silence.

It jolts Desmond out of his usual routine, and he looks down one of the entrance halls, where the noise had come from. Dust is still falling from the ceiling, tiny gray drizzle. The needle's been jarred off the record, which is still spinning absently, seeming to be unaware that it's no longer creating music.

He hears voices.

He hears the first real voices in so long. Too long.

_I think…_

_I think things are about to get a whole lot better._

He gets the gun off the wall and runs like he had been training to do his entire life.


End file.
